The one semester, two credit course will examine the basics of the Fifth Amendment privilege as well as each of the evidentiary privileges recognized in federal courts. The course will examine why the societal benefits achieved by allowing persons to exercise their respective privileges outweighs the evidentiary value of introducing privileged information into evidence. We will examine which person or party owns and may invoke each privilege, how each privilege can be lost or abused, and how lawyers must strive to protect their client’s privileges and avoid impinging on the privileges held by others. Students will examine how non lawyers often misconstrue and demean a person’s exercise of their respective privileges. A course in Evidence is a pre- or co-requisite. While the course may be of primary interest to students intending to be civil litigation attorneys, prosecutors or criminal defense attorneys, students with non-litigation interests will also benefit from the issues discussed during the course.
The final evaluation will require students to prepare a bench memorandum for a hypothetical federal district court judge analyzing constitutional and evidentiary privilege disputes that will be described in a factual record.
This bench memorandum should be 12 to 15 typed written pages. Students will be given two weeks to prepare the memorandum. Students will be permitted and encouraged to do legal research, to use spell and grammar check but will not be permitted to use AI.
Schechter, Richard J.